I feel compelled to add that if you're listening to NY&Crazy Horse Psychedelic Pill....there's stuff going on in the cd/lossless version that is absolutely not present on the 320 mp3. I'm talking about the magic that lives in the overtones of distorted guitars and artificial harmonics. Check it out. Same for all distorted guitar music. Melvins on mp3? Black Sabbath on mp3? They're being squashed.

The recording process itself is already rounding off the edges.....

disclaimerWe all hear things differently. No one is better or worse or right or wrong. My ears are not your ears

I feel compelled to add that if you're listening to NY&Crazy Horse Psychedelic Pill....there's stuff going on in the cd/lossless version that is absolutely not present on the 320 mp3. I'm talking about the magic that lives in the overtones of distorted guitars and artificial harmonics. Check it out. Same for all distorted guitar music. Melvins on mp3? Black Sabbath on mp3? They're being squashed.

The recording process itself is already rounding off the edges.....

disclaimerWe all hear things differently. No one is better or worse or right or wrong. My ears are not your ears

Even on CD you are only getting 15%. Blu ray or vinyl will get you closest to optimal fidelity

Downer, it seems like you are arguing that better is better. I agree. So, go set up your system perfectly. Get in the optimum spot and don't move! Don't step back more than a few inches because you are going to lose content. I'll make up a useless number and say 17% for every decimeter. Logarithmically, of course! You also mentioned the word "squashed", in terms of compression. Compression due to mp3 formatting is NOT the same as using a compressor such that pumping and breathing occur. The pumping and breathing artifacts are what are usually referred to as creating a squashed sound. Sometimes, squashed is meant to describe a sound that has been filtered from the top down the way a Low-Pass filter operates. This is not characteristic of mp3s. I have a whole bag of descriptors for mp3s, but squashed isn't one of them.

downer mydnyte wrote:

NewJPage wrote:

Even on CD you are only getting 15%. Blu ray or vinyl will get you closest to optimal fidelity

"Live" will get you closest to optimal fidelity. But yes, vinyl seems best.

Live can get you closest to optimum... or not. In any given situation, it could or could not be true. It is based on somewhere around All of Everything that is making up the sound. One of my favorites is when taxis scream over live wireless guitars, hahaha. Or maybe the band or the board operator is having a bad night, or maybe you aren't in the sweet spot, or maybe that shithead next to you keeps talking to his girlfriend really loud. And that's just stuff that has nothing to do with the actual content! Live rigs are notorious for having blown or non-functioning speakers, mics that get kicked around or soaked with saliva nightly, intermittent channels, performers who can't hear what each is playing because there wasn't time for a proper sound check. I have some Camper Van Beethoven recordings that I made that are peppered with the sound of the waitress throwing beer bottles into the garbage can all night long. If anything, the Experience is better live, but the sound... sometimes.

Here's an idea that I doubt has ever been brought up on this forum... Point-source reproduction. All things being equal, any single sound from a single speaker will have best audio playback. But, right from the start, we ignore that and choose stereo. I love stereo and am glad to have it, but lets understand that right from the source, we have problems. For studio audio playback, these things (phase, delay etc...) can generally be handled by fucking around in the studio long enough to either minimize problems or freak em out more to, ya know, freak out. But, live is another situation. Every time. Orchestra halls go to great effort to make some walls reflective and some absorbtive and largely overall are successful. Not so much with clubs, which can be all reflective or all absorbtive, or have standing waves or you could be too close to the bar, all kind of shit. So, how is that dealt with? They add more speakers! More and more until any resemblence to point-source has been shot to shit. Live sound often has more to do with "make do" than it does to optimum sound.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Don't Be Stupid Unless You Want To

Arkay, nice post. I'm not arguing. I don't argue with audiophiles. It's no fun. haha. I was just giving a description of what my ears are hearing.

Mp3's squash sound by losing information. They round off the edges. Everything sounds smaller. "Squash" is just a word. I could have said "reduced information". I could have said "killed the overtone magic." Granted, that happens simply by recording. And sure, the setting, amps, cables etc all come into play. All I'm saying is why make it worse by reducing the info even further by putting it on mp3? To save space? Memory is cheap.

btw, I was speaking specifically of overtones from distorted guitar music when I said "live" sounds best. Obviously, I'm referring to an optimal live setting that includes quality amps, PA, acoustics etc. Live wont sound too good if the guitar player is playing through a transistor radio inside of a dump truck that is doing 70 mph. Or maybe it will sound great depending on the listener!! I like lo-fi shit, too!

I'd just rather have as much of the original musical sound as possible. I'm not trying to prove a point. Whatever works for you. Still, I would encourage you to check out Walk Like A Giant on 320 mp3 and then the cd. The cd is still compromised but it's got more info than the mp3. See if you notice. I have not heard the vinyl but that's undoubtedly even more heavy sounding.

Another factor is how your ears get used to whats being played and adust to it. I've been to many gigs (and played quite a few) where the mix is poor, but after a while, you can hear everything going on. Even listening to the old delta records, after a while the hiss seems to minimise and you can hear the music more clearly. I've never had the urge to replace my CDs with vinyl even though their quality may be better, and MP3s never bother me because after a while I hear it all OK anyway.Well not quite all - I have real trouble understanding words being sung. I'm a classic "me ears are alight" listener. Maybe thats a reason I like FZ - the lyrics are bonkers before I mishear them anyhow. TT

@Arkay Too true about monitors. I fucked up a whole collection of mixes once trying some monitors that seemed to be doing a good job. It's not that obvious. My main problem with recording live music is that I overcook everything. If you've heard any of my music, the live band recordings are all way overcooked. The stuff that's built up from separately recorded tracks usually turns out well but I haven't had enough opportunities to record live bands to improve my skills in that area.

I suppose you guys get the irony of this thread? Normally, we start threads to discuss stuff and pricks like this come along and go all sideways over it. This time, the prick started the thread to sling one off and we're going all discussion over it.

I for one am enjoying this thread. Poly, has anyone ever told you that you look just like your hero Justin Bieber ? Shitbag, prick, what else do you have, besides a horribly disfigured face ? Did you fall out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down?All anyone wants is to get what they paid for in a reasonable time. Problems will happen, but they happen to "The Trust" way to often. And thats the end of the story !

We all get that you hate "The Trust". You've made that quite clear in a number of threads. But, to attack someone's looks who might not share your same hatred is pretty futile. How very middle schoolish of you.

The study of the human brain has come a long way. For example, when we see a face in the clouds, that's not simply an hallucination. The full range of our vision at any one time is mostly recorded. The brain is only updating by the moment a small focussed area in the middle and continues to do that as we change the point of focus. There is a huge amount of processing involved in doing just that. A large part of our stereo vision is 'faked' and a large amount of processing goes into recognising things based on what we already know, hence why we often see things that aren't there. Often, what things are is obvious, but just as often, only a studied repeated viewing of something unclear will reveal it and, every now and then, it's something new that has to be absorbed.

A similar principle is involved in making out what someone may have said when you only hear part of it and put the rest together with educated guesses. We often get it wrong. We do this with music as well.

The human ear was not constructed in a dust free lab by technicians wearing static free lab suits pinpointing components almost down to the size of a single molecule. To hear a frequency, something physical in your ear has to be able to resonate at that frequency. The brain has to then be able to make some sense of that resonation amongst all the other information coming in simultaneously, in order to distinguish it from the rest. The upper limit of that sensitivity to resonance is around 20 kHz. Digital sampling for CDs occurs at 44.1kHz mainly because of the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem but that's not the only reason, otherwise they would have just chosen 40kHz. Nyquist–Shannon is about a minim to be able to exactly reproduce information, but there's also a maximum, because if you go too high with your sampling rate, it starts to introduce artefacts.

Anyway, back to psychology, you can't get away from the fact that a significant percentage of what you hear is being constructed from past experience. For example, a lot of people when they hear the 200 Motels album the first few times, find it a really bad recording. It's one of my favourite albums, I've listened to it countless times. Along the way I've gradually made out more and more of it and it just doesn't sound that bad to me. The first time I heard it was back in the seventies and I have no recollection of what I thought of the audio quality back then. When I listen to that these days I hear a very high level of separation.

_________________The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

Sorry...I still don't get the vinyl argument for quality...it's what a lot of people are (were) used to hearing, and the R.I.A.A. amp seems to go a long way...my father's old console stereo in the living room when I was a kid had the best sound IMHO with his old Ray Coniff and Mitch Miller records, but it was the heavy bass that lured me in...

the vinyl argument for quality is a psychological one, not a scientific one.

Vinyl often went hand in hand with 2 inch reel to reel anologue tape recordings. Analogue did better with overtones. The vinyl argument is NOT psychological. However it's mostly down to the warm sound of analogue. With digital, the more you approach the analogue curve the better it sounds. If you're going to bother to produce a super fidelity product it helps if the listener has access to a lossless file.

But I like The Pod by Ween as much as Dark Side Of The Moon so what the fuck do I know?

Well as I've always felt, and said above, I DID like the sound of my dad's old console stereo filling the house on a summer afternoon because it was deep...and when a friend of mine got his (I think) C-10's (not NS-10's like I said on the other page...) and would play stuff on vinyl it would sound amazing...AND when we hooked up my CD player to them, and messed with the EQ a bit, we were able to replicate that deeper sound.

But about my friends speakers...I'd HATE to hear what an Mp3 sounded like on them, vs. what the vinyl and CD sounded like.... I'm not sure EQ would give Mp3's the same treatment...but who knows... I like the sound of my iPod, but LOVE the sound of my full fidelity stuff!

2-inch Analog tape (well and most tape) can be saturated with sound, but with digital, you need to EQ...that in and of itself is something you need to play around with to get the sound you like.

Well as I've always felt, and said above, I DID like the sound of my dad's old console stereo filling the house on a summer afternoon because it was deep...

I grew up on vinyl. My Dad had a fairly high quality turn table and amplifier installed in our lounge. My first player as a young teenager was this little plastic box with a speaker in the lid that you took off and propped up near the player. It was meant for 45s but I often played LPs which kind of sat over the base like a wobbly umbrella. It was a piece of crap but I loved it at the time. Listening to music on my Dad’s system and appreciating that level of quality didn’t prevent me from enjoying my own crappy little system - similar to the principle of willing suspension of disbelief.

By the time I was able to afford my first CD player, I was already 29 and they instantly sounded better to me. I had tons of psychological padding built up over the years listening to Vinyl but no attachment, and I only continued to put up with it for as long as it took me to replace my collection with CD versions. My main objection with CDs in the early days was that a whole bunch of digital possibilities for screwing with the sound became available and FZ was one of the worst offenders for overusing that stuff. The UM version of Chunga's Revenge highlights this perfectly. That was one vinyl that remained better than the CD until that version finally appeared. And still, I preferred to listen to the Ryko CD rather than fuck around with Vinyl.

We all listen to music with brains full of more or less listening history and anyone who believes Vinyl is better than CD may have good reasons in terms of liking the crackle and pop like a warm fire on a Winter's night or that inexplicable warm tone it adds (which is in fact scientifically explicable and reproducible), but, if they think it's better in terms of the accuracy of reproduction of sound, they're deluding themselves.

_________________The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

I'm not so sure....I don't have vinyl at all but the full clear waveform is ever present.Digital, because of oversampling, no matter how high will always be an approximate of the full waveform.Whether people can "hear that" will always be subjective.

That being said....vinyl will ALWAYS suffer because of too many variables related to the medium itself.I just don't have the patience for it!

That being said....vinyl will ALWAYS suffer because of too many variables related to the medium itself.I just don't have the patience for it!

I hear that.

I own about 20 albums and never play 'em. One is the French 200 Motels and the vinyl looks almost new. I also have the Velvet Underground's first with full banana sticker and the picture of the guy on the back which was airbrushed out in later editions. I don't know what I'm gonna do with that record but I should probably sell it soon.

Well as I've always felt, and said above, I DID like the sound of my dad's old console stereo filling the house on a summer afternoon because it was deep...

We all listen to music with brains full of more or less listening history and anyone who believes Vinyl is better than CD may have good reasons in terms of liking the crackle and pop like a warm fire on a Winter's night or that inexplicable warm tone it adds (which is in fact scientifically explicable and reproducible), but, if they think it's better in terms of the accuracy of reproduction of sound, they're deluding themselves.

I don't think we are deluding ourselves. It is plain old impossible to capture the same amount of information on a CD as you can capture on vinyl, so if you want "accuracy of reproduction of sound," then CD will not get you there...gets you about 15%. As for the crackle and pop, clean your records and you don't have that.

You are not going to get "accuracy" even with vinyl. From the stereo master tapes to the pressing of the vinyl there is a great loss. So what accuracy are you talking about? Because unless you got the stereo master tape and the recorder that made the master tape, you aren't going to hear accuracy. I went to cd when I bought a first generation cd player. And yes there were problems with tracking, etc. But I was so relieved to get rid of the warps, click and pops of crappy vinyl. You got to remember the vinyl that was being produced then aren't the nice $25 a record 180 or 250 gram half-speed pressing you get now. Back in the eighties they were total shit. Even with the sampling rates, I think the cds of today are more "accurate" then vinyl.

^Perhaps corporate vinyl in the 80s was cheaper since they were ushering in cd's at that time.

This is my idea of a great sounding recording (from 1972). The cd sounds great, too, but I've heard it on vinyl. Digital recording is worth it for all it's conveniences but analogue tape seems to capture more closely what it really sounded like.

The basic premise of this thread was put forward by a person who shows no respect for anyone else's threads. Who gives a fuck what we talk about here?

You and the other guy who wants to stick up for you can go fuck yourself....Or fuck each other. Everyone's opinion on the music is fascinating. The Trust sucks. They own the rights. Don't complain about it. It will be ready when its ready. I remember hearing that nearly 5 years ago. Still hasn't showed up for some people. I got mine. Someday it will show up on your doorstep....or not. They already have your money. Not mine. I'm lovin' it

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